


The Souvenirs I Left Behind

by jiokra



Category: The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 04:33:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5276810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiokra/pseuds/jiokra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been nearly three years since Mark ended their relationship. Now that Ares 3 has completed the return flight home, Mindy doesn't think Earth could feel any smaller.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Souvenirs I Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cedara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cedara/gifts).



> Happy Yultide!
> 
> This is a treat!

It was 3AM when the Ares 3 crew landed back on Earth.

Mindy watched on TV as they broke through the atmosphere and crashed into the Pacific near Alaska, whereas she was safe in her cramped apartment on a well-loved leather couch and buried under crocheted blankets. She shoved grapes into her mouth to avoid gnawing at her lip, riveted at the spaceship that bobbed and floated in the open sea.

Everyone around the world held their breath because this was the moment they’d all anticipated. Mark Watney had officially been saved. The last chapter of the book completed, a global sigh of relief. Mindy wanted to cry, but she didn’t because the tears would make it too difficult to see the screen. She needed to see him and confirm that he truly had made it off Mars.

CNN’s coverage was now in complete silence, not a single reporter speaking because they were also riveted by the anticipation. The headline on the bottom changed from reporting the landing and now read: “DOORS TO OPEN SOON.” Mindy shoved two grapes into her mouth and chomped viciously. The space craft continued to buoy about in the pitch black waters, the bright flashes of light reflecting off the ripples in the ocean. Then the door popped open, swinging up and over like Doc’s DeLorean.

At first, no one came out.

Then a hand slapped onto the edge of the door frame, and Lewis hoisted herself out.

CNN exploded in chatter.

"And now at 12:01 GMT, the Commander of Ares 3 has begun to exit the ship. She will have to stand on the craft and wait there until the rescue boat finally reaches the ship."

"Indeed, Cathy. The exact coordinates of the ship's location only reached the rescue team moments before us. Our clear image is only made possible by lots of zooming in." The news anchors chuckled a bit. "Oh, look! The rescue team has arrived. And another crew member is now exiting."

One by one, the Ares 3 crew climbed out of the ship they had called home for the better part of three years. Everyone but Mark, that is, likely to playfully mess with everyone. It was so typical of Mark that Mindy nearly burst into tears. Once everyone wandered off the ship and hopped onto the rescue boat, CNN zoomed in more on the ship, centering on the open chasm that Mark should be popping his head out of any second now. Grape midway to her gaping mouth, Mindy forgot all else and latched onto the screen, heart pounding endlessly.

It'd been years since the mission started. And she'd only seen photos of stuff he'd done on Mars, never of him. She'd carefully avoided looking at photos of him whenever possible. It was too difficult, it hurt to think that hard about him. And when the higher ups at NASA had questioned her very existence in Team Get Mark Off Mars, she'd soldiered on. She hadn't been invited to be part of the first people to greet the astronauts when they arrived, which made sense since Mindy was just the lowly stalker photographer. It'd been a fluke that brought Mark and her together this time, just like the first time. The universe must've hated her.

Tonight, her phone had been ringing off the hook because of friends and family badgering her with an inquisition.

"Are you two getting back together?" asked Liz, her best friend from grad school.

"Does he know you're the one who found him?" asked her father.

"He's not good at feelings. He's a scientist, but forgets he's also human," said Mark's mother.

When his hand finally broke out of the ship and gripped the edge of the door frame, Mindy dove for the remote control, grapes flying out of her lap and raining onto the huge fluffy rug coloring up the hardwood floors, and turned off the TV. The flash of white before the screen fell to darkness burned her eyes and she saw spots floating in the air. She blinked and blinked, gnawing on her lip.

She would have married Mark, had he asked. But instead, the week before the Ares 3 mission, he'd broken up with her, citing the reason being that if something went wrong, instead of focusing on the task at hand, he'd be too worried about her, about not coming back and leaving her alone. She supposed it had been wise to break up with her, considering how things had turned out. What were the odds?

Dropping the remote control on the couch, Mindy kicked off the blanket and sat down on the floor, picking up the fallen grapes.

Her chubby black cat Sam strolled in front of her, rubbing against her knees. Sighing, Mindy pulled him into her lap and scratched the top of his head. Sam purred like a motorcycle.

Begrudgingly, curiosity got the better of her. She settled Sam onto her lap and then reached back, fishing for the remote control under the blanket. She took a deep breath, then switched on the TV, combing a hand through Sam's fur as the sudden volume startled him. Mark wasn't on screen, but the headline said that he'd speak a few short words soon. Mindy wore a brave smile and ignored the pressure building in her gut.

* * *

The next day, Mindy was at work bright and early. Today she had a new task to sort through photos a rover had taken on the Moon. It was sleepy work since most of it was pictures of grey rocks, but they were grey rocks from the Moon, which made the otherwise boring task a little bit interesting.

Mainly out of habit because it had kinda been her job once upon a time, she spent her lunch break eating a club sandwich and scouring for news articles about Mark. It felt safe to read text about him, as opposed to the news where he'd been moving and speaking, revealing all those familiar ticks that reminded Mindy of morning coffees in bed and artful debates about science. Not much went on in the articles. Apparently it was exhausting to once be in space and then be on Earth, so he hadn't said anything too quotable to reporters. But since he was Mark Watney, the Mars guy, he could have recited the telephone book and made it sound exciting. Biting her lip, Mindy ate up the articles anyway and soaked in all the info they spun up.

When Venkat knocked on her door, she jumped and spun around frantically. A huge photo of Mark grinned at them from the computer monitor. She had definitely not just been staring at it. Venkat tipped his head in the photo's direction. "Amazing, huh?"

"Ah, yes. It is, yes."

"I spoke to him, you know. He'd quite shaken, but well, at least he's home."

Mindy nodded. "It must be a shock."

"You should meet him. I told him about you, he seemed a bit shy but eager to thank you. You two should really meet."

He didn't know about them. No one did but close friends and family because Mark and Mindy had always been a bit private and rarely crossed paths at work, since they worked in completely different branches. Mindy didn't know how to tell Venkat that they'd met four and a half years ago in one of those rare occasions they'd crossed paths in the McDonald's on NASA headquarters. She'd been craving a McCafe and Mark was just hungry. Her credit card had been denied and he volunteered to pay for her. It had been a $1 cup of coffee, after all. Not a huge issue, even though she'd protested initially but given in because _coffee_.

Pulling at her necklace, Mindy's eyes darted around the room as she spoke. "Oh, I don't know. He must be busy."

"Funny, he said the same thing about you. Then I informed him that neither of you work Friday evenings and, as luck would have it, there's a welcome back party this Friday."

Mindy raced through her memory for prior commitments to leverage so to weasel her way out of this. "Uh, well...." Venkat raised an eyebrow, and Mindy stopped pretending. "I'll be there, I guess," she said, defeated.

"Great. You won't regret it." He spoke a bit more about work, how things are going for her, possibilities about another promotion in her future. Mindy stopped herself from freaking out over the last one, since she'd been aching to do something that involved her degree for years now. It'd be nice to chisel away more at her upcoming student debt bills, too.

After he left, Mindy eyed the calendar on the wall. It was a Wednesday. A few more days left for her to hunt down a poor sod with the flu, pay them to sneeze on her, and acquire a valid excuse to call in sick for Friday.

* * *

Liz was late for their dinner date that night. She arrived in a flurry of hugs and vanilla perfume. A waitress flew over with the pitcher of margaritas Mindy had ordered, and the two friends got to business drinking it. They pointedly avoided discussing He Who Must Not Be Named and instead debated what to share off the dinner menu.

"Oh, spaghetti squash scampi!" said Liz, a tinge too full of excitement. "Wow, look at that! Dark ale marinated pulled pork with a cherry sauce!"

"Mango salsa with oven baked — oh — oh my god. _Oh my god_." Mindy scrambled to cover her face behind her menu.

Liz snapped up and whipped her head around. "What's happening?"

"Near the bar," hissed Mindy. "It's — It's _him_."

"What!" Liz swiveled around in her seat, drawing attention from nearby tables.

Mindy jolted. "Don't _look_!"

Liz sucked in a breath and spun back around, seizing her menu and attempting to cover herself up, too. "Should we leave?"

Gulping down more of her margarita – she needed it – Mindy shook her head. "Can't. We ordered appetizers."

"Do you think he's seen us?"

Mindy peeked over the edge of her menu. It seemed official. The universe either hated her or Mark, and Mindy wasn't in the mood for this heartbreaking twist of fate. Mark sat at a table with friends of his, shoveling a steak into his mouth and barely chewing between bites. Everyone watched him devour the contents of his plate, looking like he hadn't had a proper meal in ages. Which he hadn't, of course. He'd survived off vitamin pills and potatoes, then welcomed the hearty meal of juice packets and freeze dried meat and veggies. Mindy spent many evenings hunting recipes online and repinning hearty stews on Pinterest, starting the second he was found to be alive. The board was set to secret and it had a special title, "Mark's welcome home dinner." It was easier to live in a fantasy world where she saw their future together than dwell on the fact that he could've died up there.

He looked so handsome. Cheekbones sharper than usual, slightly pale, but there was still the mischievous gleam in his eye, gears visibly turning as he analyzed the conversation, a wisecrack loose on his lips. He wore a maroon sweater that brought out his eyes and warmed up his skin. It was the one her mother had bought him four birthdays ago, she realized, feeling her stomach pinch.

Between bites, Mark glanced up and locked eyes with her, expression stilling. Terror tore through Mindy and she snapped the menu back over her face.

"He saw me," she whispered frantically.

"Let's just... calm down. Be rational."

"Let's ask for a box. Take the appetizers home with us," offered Mindy.

"We could get a pizza, watch some Hugh Grant films."

"First, we finish the margaritas."

"That goes without saying."

And that was how the evening continued on. They left the restaurant by taking the long way out, since Mark's table occupied the shortest path to the exit. Luckily the bus had turned onto the restaurant's street by the time they finished jogging to the corner.

Seemed like Mindy was still Mark's #1 stalker.

* * *

On Thursday evening, Mindy arrived home from work, kicked off her shoes at the front door, and dragged herself to her laptop to check her email and pay bills. She'd been avoiding it all week. Her stomach grumbled, but dinner had to wait. The electricity bill was more important.

Sam jumped onto the desk and walked in front of the monitor. Mindy pulled him into her lap and frowned at her inbox. Eight new messages awaited her. She clicked on the first one, dutifully reading through a message from PG&E, then clicked the next arrow button and completed the rounds. When she got to the last new message, her hand froze on Sam and she reread the sender's address a few times to make sure she didn't need to schedule an appointment at the optometrist.

> From: watney@nasa.gov  
>  To: parkmindy@nasa.gov  
>  Subject: Please read
> 
> Hey,
> 
> I know I'm not your favorite person in the world. I don't know what to say, but please read these.
> 
> I understand if you don't want anything to do with me. I don't know if you saw me, but I was at Rodland's last night and saw you with Liz. You seem well.
> 
> Anyway, please read these.
> 
> \- M
> 
> sol45.pdf, sol47.pdf, sol...

There were endless amounts of files. Mindy licked her lips, but then noticed her jaw had dropped a bit. Pressing her lips firm together, Mindy rubbed circles on Sam's cheek and squeezed her eyes shut as she clicked on sol45.pdf, not brave enough yet to look.

> LOG ENTRY: Sol 45
> 
> Mars's first man made reservoir is surviving the drought splendidly. I cracked down on the hydrazine today and created four new liters of water. The potatoes are looking good. I fell into a bit of routine today, but had to snap out of it a few times in case I blew up the HAB again.
> 
> I started a new episode of Three's Company. Why do Janet and Chrissy have such weird taste in men? Will they ever paint the walls a new color? I guess I'll have to tune in next week to find out.
> 
> You know, I'm not much better than Janet and Chrissy’s boyfriends. I wish I had a recording of Mindy's voice. I've forgotten what she sounds like and that scares me. Anyone who's uncovered this entry and reading it now, if Mindy's still out there, please tell her I'm a jerk.
> 
> Also, that I'm gonna carve a jack-o-lantern version of her into the biggest potato in the harvest, grow out a beard, and reenact the Wilson scene in the rover on the way to the Ares 4 site.
> 
> LOG ENTRY: Sol 78
> 
> Sirius 4, so far, so good. I took some selfies by a rock the other day. I think it’d make a good profile picture. Not many people can say they took a selfie on Mars.
> 
> This reminds me of when Mindy and I went on a road trip through Death Valley. It was so hot that we couldn’t leave the car, the windows were covered in shirts and towels, and when someone farted, you had to learn to deal because you couldn’t open the windows and let in the heat.
> 
> It’d been one of the happiest moments of my life.
> 
> Hanging out with my piss and shit? Jamming to disco? Not the happiest moment.

It was challenging to read the entries and Mindy had gotten up to fix tea a few times, not being able to finish reading in one sitting. There were a lot of files. She readied some rice for cooking, hunted down some cold pizza from last night, then ambled back over to the computer. Biting her lip, she selected one of the later log entries.

> LOG ENTRY: Sol 481
> 
> I’m worried I won’t outrun the storm. Maybe I’ll take a wrong turn. The panels won’t charge. I’ll die here.
> 
> My parents will outlive me. I guess it was good to break up with Mindy. She dealt with the break up and didn’t have to mourn a dead boyfriend. I guess I’m not a total fuck up at relationships. Pardon my French.
> 
> I set out a new panel today and it looks good for the readings so far. It’s a 15.2% efficiency, no change from yesterday, but at least it hasn’t gotten worse. Oxygen levels—

Mindy broke into a sob. It’d been so hard to not become overwhelmed with worry when she watched Mark on Mars. Part of her had shut down and become robotic in routine while working. That was the only way she could do her job and not weep over every photo, knowing that the man she’d wanted to tease awake in the mornings, or play doctor with when he caught a cold, was lost in space, experiencing an indescribable sense of loneliness. All of his things that were scattered about in her apartment had been packed up and moved into storage, or else she stayed up all night, staring at the ceiling, paralyzed in terror because each item reminded her that his survival had been held together by the skin of his teeth.

She’d gone crazy when NASA reconnected with him through the PATHFINDER. The nerds in tech were chatting with him, about life altering stuff, of course, but they didn’t wake up in the middle of the night from their own screams, elicited from a nightmare of finding photos of Mark’s dead body on Mars. It’d been agony not to bust them out of their seats and seize the keyboard and just type hello to Mark.

What had stopped that rabid fantasy every time was the knowledge that Mark had ended things.

Now Mindy just hoped that missing her hadn’t nearly cost him his life.

Suffice to say, Mindy didn’t read anymore of the entries.

She ate dinner, took a long, long shower, then went to bed, petting Sam until she drifted to sleep.

* * *

The party had gone into full swing an hour ago, but Mindy stayed behind in her office, jotting down notes on an unknown crater she discovered on the Moon. It was a little nifty to discover something, especially a simple find like a crater instead of a person, and Mindy delighted in having a valid excuse to avoid going to the party.

She hadn’t planned on it, feeling too nervous, and cemented that goal by coming to work in an over sized navy blue hoodie and flared jeans. She felt a smidgen of guilt over not going, but didn’t dwell on it. Those entries didn’t necessary mean anything, after all. Possibly the loneliness had gotten to him on the red planet, he’d developed a coping mechanism of reanalyzing his life prior to that point. It was possible, she told herself.

Mark didn’t make mistakes. That’s how he survived Mars. If he broke up with her, it was likely for the best.

She immersed her entire being into this undiscovered Moon crater. Science soothed her, aloe on the burns in her heart.

Half an hour blew by. She ought to go home and feed her cat. Sam tended to get lonely rather easily, too. She blew out a sigh and ran a hand through her hair, then pulled a hair tie off her wrist and tossed her hair into a haphazard bun. She saved relevant files, then shut everything down and gathered her belongings. It was always a little weird leaving work, everything seemed so finite.

Knotting her scarf around her neck, Mindy yawned and wrenched open the door – then jerked back in surprise when someone nearly whacked her in the face.

“Holy smokes! Didn’t expect the door to open,” said Mark, laughing.

Mindy swallowed, taking in his waifish figure. He’d lost a lot of muscle, now likely weighing as much as her. He wore a button up shirt that was slightly too big, engulfing him and making him look smaller than he was. Or maybe he was that small now. She wanted to grab him by the collar, shove herself against him and squeeze tight. What if this was a dream, or if the walls tumbled away and winds swept Mark up, casting him off and alone into outer space again?

“I was just heading home,” she said.

“No place like home!” Mark wore an earsplitting grin. It was so infectious that despite herself, Mindy returned it.

Overcome with nerves, Mindy stared down at their feet. “What brings you here? There’s the party for the crew.”

“Ah, yes,” said Mark, stuffing his hands in his pants pockets, which were held up by the tightest hole in his belt. “I can’t handle, um, handle the noise.”

“Oh.” She had not expected that, since Mark was one explosion of noise himself, but things must be different after his experience. She watched his feet shuffle from side to side.

“And, to be honest, the party felt a bit empty without you.”

Mindy looked up at that, and Mark snapped his head up too, having mirrored her before by looking at the floor. Looking deep into his eyes, Mindy whispered, “Empty?”

All humor left his countenance, replaced by worrying lines between his eyebrows, a downward tug on his mouth. She hated seeing him sad. That kind of emotion was counter intuitive to his nature. Often she’d do anything to make him laugh and return back to his normal self. She wanted to trace circles on his wrist, massage that spot just below his ear, like they’d always done when he lost it. But she froze, afraid of the wall between them.

“I can’t— We—” Mindy glanced around, unable to look at him.

“I was an idiot,” he said, so quiet the words barely escaped his lips. “I did a lot of thinking up there, when I wasn’t busy nearly getting myself killed. Most of it was how to survive, but sometimes it was about my regrets.” She forced herself to look at him. He was watching her, expression distant and immersed in wording his thoughts, near vacant. “I thought about my parents and my family. Whenever I thought about you, I kept forgetting about all of it. About the food, the equipment, the reality of it all. Even when I wasn’t thinking about you, it was like you were there the entire time. All the things you’ve said and done that I’ve adopted, the weaknesses you made me overcome — you saved me.”

It was like someone had knocked her down and stolen the air from her lungs. All she could do was stare. Cognizance returned to Mark’s gaze, and he swallowed, nodding.

“I ended things,” he said, exhaling a sardonic laugh. “It’s not in my right to say these sort of things. But I wanted to let you know that I’m, uh, well, an idiot for all those things I said.”

Before she could get a word out, Mark sprung away. A massive grin was back on his face, and he threw an arm up to rub at the back of his neck. “Martinez was going to do a keg stand,” he said, backing away. “I should probably go back and take photos.”

He made it a few paces down the hall when sense hit Mindy again. The entries, his words — it’d been everything she’d hoped to hear since the second he walked away from her the days before Ares 3 launched. She watched his boney limbs carry him down the hallway, thinking _I want you in my bed, my hands, my arms, my home. I won’t let you go this time._ Darting out of the room, she shouted down the hall, a squeak because of the unnatural volume coming out of her. “I took photos of you!”

Mark whipped around so fast that he tripped and caught himself against the wall. “I’m sorry?”

Mindy latched onto her scarf and wrung the fabric between her fingers. “When you were on— were there. I was like your personal paparazzi.” She grimaced and covered her eyes with a hand. “I mean to say, I discovered you.”

“That’s not creepy at all,” said Mark, but he stepped closer to her, pausing a few feet before her.

Mindy sniffed, and became startled, oblivious to the knowledge that she’d begun to cry. “When I wasn’t stalking you, I was gathering recipes to cook for you when you came back, or dreaming about you, or crying on the phone with your parents.”

“My parents?”

“When I let slip that my job was to keep track of you, your mom came over with freshly baked apple crumble to bribe me into showing her photos.”

“Did you?”

He was teasing her, like old times. In retaliation, she ignored the question, and he snorted.

“Are you hungry?” asked Mindy, fiddling with her purse strap. She caught his eye and smiled. “I have a two day old slice of pizza in the fridge and cereal.”

“I’d like that,” said Mark.

* * *

They’d bickered over whether or not to split the pizza in equal portions. Mark wanted to cut it in half, but Mindy tried to give him the bigger piece. They settled with halves and rationing out the cereal to make it a full meal. In the end, the cereal sat on the coffee table, ignored and growing soggy, because Mark cheered at the sight of Sam and flopped down on the floor, sticking his hand under a chair for Sam to sniff.

“You have a cat!” he’d said, grinning.

Mark rested on his back, his arm pulled over his head. Mindy laid on her side and watched Sam inspect Mark’s fingers with tentative sniffs. “I adopted him two years ago. Apparently he’d been at the shelter the longest so far. Over a year and a half. I didn’t bother looking at other cats and took him on the spot.”

“Smart thinking,” said Mark, then started clicking his tongue.

Mindy turned her gaze to him, and simply watched as his chest rose and fell with each breath, afraid to blink and risk that moment she shut her eyes to be when the illusion broke and she woke in bed, panting and afraid because her best friend was the loneliest man in the universe. She reached out a hand, then set it on his chest, feeling his heat, watching her hand move along with his breath. Then she blinked, over and over, swallowing back a knot in her throat when Mark still sprawled across the floor of her living room every time she opened her eyes.

He quit clicking his tongue. Slowly, he moved the hand outstretched toward Sam and set it over hers. He traced along her fingers, from the tips to the knuckle, a gentle caress. It’d been so long since they’d touched each other, she could cry, but instead she leaped forward and buried her head on his chest and breathed deeply. She smelled soap, laundry detergent, the unmistakable scent of body odor. She breathed in again, and again, until she did begin crying. Mark shifted to his side, cushioning her head with his arm. His eyes were shining, too.

“This is real?” he whispered.

Mindy bit her lip, nodding.

Marked pressed his lips to her forehead, staying there for an eternity although it lasted only seconds. Then he rest his forehead against hers. “I love you,” he said. “It’s true when they say you should tell the people you care about that you love them ‘cause you never know when it might be your last.”

Mindy sniffed. “I love you, too. And it wasn’t your last.”

“I know.” Mark searched her eyes for something; she didn’t know what for but his gaze was full of a fervent need. “You’ll have to be patient with me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to remember that on my own.”

“Whatever you need, I’ll provide.”

Mark’s eyes slid shut. The corner of his mouth quivered. “I love you.”

Mindy scooted close, breathing him in again. “I love you, too.”

 


End file.
